The Giver

The Giver. 0440237688. Lowis Lowry. September 2002. Newberry Medal. Grades 5-8. Caucasian.

Jonas lives in a world that is perfect. He becomes a 12 and the world of adulthood begins for him. He is chosen to become the person to take the memories of the community. He is then faced with things he has never heard of or known existed. Some examples are pain, love, color, snow and sun. Everything in his community is controlled so he is on his own besides the man giving him the memories, the Giver. Throughout his experience of receiving memories, he thinks about how things should be and wants to change things. The Giver and Jonas come up with a plan that gets thrown off because a young boy is going to be released, which means killed. Jonas does not want this to happen so he leaves with the young boy and once he leaves the community the memories are lost and brought back to the members of the community. In the end, we are left wondering if Jonas and the young boy Gabriel made it.

I think this would be an excellent book to discuss our world and discuss if it would be good to have a perfect world or not. It would be a good way to help students appreciate what we have.

Jonas really seemed real to me and I felt like I was going through everything with him. I thought the author did a good job of making me feel that I was part of Jonas and/or the community. There are also many cliff hangers that keep you wanting more and the plot continues to build throughout. It continues to climb upward until the last page and it doesn't even leave you with a definate ending. The reader is left to end it ourselves. It was wonderful.